Fiona Griffiths is a historian of medieval Western Europe, focusing on intellectual and religious life from the ninth to the thirteenth century. Her work explores the possibilities for social experimentation and cultural production inherent in medieval religious reform movements, addressing questions of gender, spirituality, and authority, particularly as they pertain to the experiences and interactions of religious men (priests or monks) with women (nuns and clerical wives). Griffiths is the author of Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women's Monastic Life, The Middle Ages Series (The University of Pennsylvania Press: 2018); and The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century, The Middle Ages Series (The University of Pennsylvania Press: 2007); as well as co-editor of Sensory Reflections: Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts, (with Kathryn Starkey (De Gruyter: 2018); and Partners in Spirit: Men, Women, and Religious Life in Germany, 1100-1500, (with Julie Hotchin) (Brepols: 2014). Her essays have appeared in Speculum, Church History, the Journal of Medieval History, and Viator. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; the Stanford Humanities Center; and the Institute of Historical Research (University of London).

Griffith's research was featured in The Europe Center October 2017 Newsletter.

Dr. Ali Yaycıoğlu is a historian specializing in the History of the Ottoman Empire, Middle East, and Modern Turkey. Currently he is serving as the director of the Abbasi Program of Islamic Studies and the Middle East Studies Forum.

His research focuses on different dimensions of political, economic, and legal institutions and practices, as well as the social and cultural dynamics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr. Yaycıoğlu is particularly intrigued by visions, representations, and documentation of concepts like property, territory, and nature in early periods. His is also interested in the application of digital tools to comprehend, visualize, and conceptualize these historical perspectives. Dr. Yaycıoğlu offers courses on the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Empires, Markets, and Networks in the Early Modern World, Global History of the Age of Revolutions, Doing Economic History, and Digital Humanities.

Dr. Yaycıoğlu's first book, Partners of the Empire: Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford, 2016), reevaluates the Ottoman Empire within the global context of the revolutionary age in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He also co-edited the Ottoman Digital Humanities Special Issue of the Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies (2023) and Crafting History: Essays on the Ottoman World and Beyond in Honor of Cemal Kafadar (Boston, 2023). Dr. Yaycıoğlu's essays on the history and contemporary affairs of the Republic of Turkey were published in his Uncertain Past Time: Empire, Republic, and Politics (in Turkish, Istanbul, 2024).

Currently, he is immersed in two book projects: Karlowitz Moment: The Ottoman Empire and the Making of the Modern World, 1699-1839, a reconsideration of the Ottoman experience in the global context during the long eighteenth century and The Order of Debt: Power, Wealth, and Death in the Ottoman Empire, analyzing property, finance, and Ottoman statehood in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Dr. Yaycıoğlu is the co-editor of the Stanford Ottoman World Series: Critical Studies in Empire, Nature and Knowledge also oversees a digital history project, Mapping Ottoman Epirus, housed in Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA).

Born and raised in Ankara, Turkey, Dr. Yaycıoğlu earned degrees in International Relations from the Middle East Technical University and Ottoman History from Bilkent University. Further studies led him to McGill University in Montreal, where he focused on Arabic and Islamic legal history. He completed his Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard in 2008, followed by post-doctoral studies in the Agha Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard and later in Hellenic Studies at Princeton. He Joined the History Department at Stanford in 2011. Dr. Yaycıoğlu regularly writes opinion pieces in Gazete Oksijen and other venues in Turkish and English on History and contemporary politics, mainly focusing on Turkey and the Middle East. In parallel with his academic pursuits, Dr. Yaycıoğlu is engaged in visual arts under the name "Critical Imagination," conducting artistic work in Palo Alto and Istanbul through the Atölye20 platform.

Josiah Ober, Mitsotakis Professor in the School of Humanities and Science, works on historical institutionalism and political theory, focusing on democratic theory and the contemporary relevance of the political thought and practice of the ancient Greek world. He is the author of Demopolis: Democracy before Liberalism (2017), The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece (2015) and other books, mostly published by Princeton University Press, including Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (1989), Political Dissent in Democratic Athens (2008), and Democracy and Knowledge (2008). He has also published about 100 articles and chapters, including recent articles in American Political Science Review, Philosophical Studies, Polis, Public Choice, Critical Review, and Transactions of the American Philological Association. Work in progress includes books on instrumental rationality in classical Greek thought and the role of civic bargains in the emergence and persistence of democratic government.

Steven Press received his B.A. from Vanderbilt University and his A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught at Harvard and Vanderbilt before coming to Stanford. His research interests include sovereignty and commodity networks. Press's first book, Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe's Scramble for Africa (Harvard University Press, 2017) won the American Historical Association Pacific Coast Branch Book Award. Press's second book, The Jewels of Empire: Germany, Africa, and the Rise of the Diamond (Harvard University Press, 2021) won the German Studies Association’s Barclay Book Prize in 2022.